"QUOTATION MARK - A Tiger, Kafka and Love" is the topic of the author's talk in Berlin. Rajesh Parameswaran was born in India, grew up in Texas and then studied law in Yale. Actually he is based in New York, but lives currently - due to his professorship - in Leipzig. Together with the authoress Teresa Praeauer he will talk about the reflecting and writing concerning love and why a tiger and the great Franz Kafka...

Édouard Louis, born as Eddy Bellegueule, is a literary rising star. In his autobiographical debut "En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule", published in 2014, he describes his childhood of poverty, alcoholism, unemployment and racism and his escape from these precarious conditions. The book, a bestseller in France and translated in over 20 languages, provoked a heated debate over social inequality and the resulting...

In April 1948, the UN declared human health a human right and founded the World Health Organization (WHO). Today, WHO is supported by 194 Member States and more than 700 organizations. More than 7,000 people work in 150 country offices. 70 years after its founding, it's time for an inventory: Health for all people - is the goal attainable? What successes has the WHO achieved so far? Where did she fail?

The current topic of the event of the ZEIT-Foundation Daniel Barenboim, violinist and director of the chamber music section of the Barenboim-Said Academy, Sookee, rap musician and Stefan Schmidt, pianist and director of the Berlin street choir, discussed whether music is rather exclusive or if music brings people together, no matter which kind of music and how music and its actors can promote cohesion in society.

Da...

Rajesh Parameswaran was born in Chennai, India and moved to the United States as an infant. With the glittering, savage and elegant first collection "I Am an Executioner", where reality loops in Borgesian twists and dazzles with Bollywood exuberance, where frayed photographs take on a life of their own and where elephants wish only to die with dignity, Rajesh Parameswaran bursts onto the literary landscape as an...

In the winter term 2017/18 Joshua Cohen is S. Fischer guest professor. Cohen, who won the Pushcart Prize 2012 and the Matanel Award for Young Promising Jewish Writers 2013 is often compared by critics to his rhetorically brilliant colleagues David Foster Wallace and David Pynchon. In the Jewish Museum in Berlin he is reading passages from his new novel "Book of Numbers".

Former president of the German Bundestag Prof. Dr. Norbert Lammert discussed together with Titus Dittmann, founder of skate-aid and Gyde Jensen, youngest female member of the German Bundestag the topic. Prof. Lammert said that the attitude for social cohesion is self-assurance as confidence and self-distance and to not take oneself more important than others.